“A government survey says 1 in 10 U.S. children has ADHD, a sizable increase from a few years earlier that researchers think might be explained by growing awareness and better screening.”
Or it could be explained by it being over-diagnosed by people who just don’t want to deal with annoying kids.

“One expert found it hard to believe that so many kids might have ADHD. ‘It sounds a little high,’ said Howard Abikoff, a psychologist who is director of the Institute for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity and Behavior Disorders at New York University’s Child Study Center.”
Uhh, you think?

“Other studies have suggested more like 5 percent of kids have ADHD, and there are no known biological reasons for it to be on a recent increase, he added.”
That sounds a little more reasonable to me. But what do I know?

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I wouldn’t be surprised if this issue is like the increase in autism diagnosis over the last few decades. What used to be a small and quite severe illness is now ‘autism spectrum disorder’, that includes a lot of borderline cases.

I still believe that many “cases of ADHD” are what we used to refer to as “boys being boys.” Children are expected to behave a certain way and some kids don’t simply meet these norms: some boys are too hyper and some girls are overly passive. Also, many parents probably find a relief when their kids are diagnosed with a “disorder.” Being “ill” sounds better than being “not well-behaved”; parents can stop blaming themselves and hope for a cure.

I think so. I don’t even bother recommending movies I thought were pretty good when I was a kid anymore to my sister’s kids because they are too slow paced and don’t have the content to keep the kids interested. Today, movies have to be joke-joke-joke or action-action-action to keep them entertained. Brains adapt and develop according to the stimulus that is provided. If they get lots of stimulus then they get used to that level of stimulus. I think movies today are a lot more violent also. They get used to that level of violence. If they suddenly had to live with the lower level of stimulus that was around say 50 years ago they would go nuts.

Brains adapt and develop according to the stimulus that is provided. If they get lots of stimulus then they get used to that level of stimulus. I think movies today are a lot more violent also. They get used to that level of violence. If they suddenly had to live with the lower level of stimulus that was around say 50 years ago they would go nuts.

What does any of this have to do with ADHD? Is that what they are teaching you in your psychology classes?

Don’t forget that what they say about movies today, they used to say about comic books in the fifties.

Rather than overdiagnosis, I think it’s just that in the past it was severely underdiagnosed. After all, look at the Tea Partiers and the way the vote went recently. I figure that at least 60% of the U.S. public has ADHD. And, I think that a fair amount of those who were diagnosed with that syndrome merely happened to think and act outside the box, which distressed the teachers, so it was a misdiagnosis.

“Other studies have suggested more like 5 percent of kids have ADHD, and there are no known biological reasons for it to be on a recent increase, he added.”
That sounds a little more reasonable to me. But what do I know?

That’s still 1 in 20, which really isn’t that different from 1 in 10 - it’s the same order of magnitude.

If ADHD is so common, one might think that there is some kind of adaptive advantage to being ADHD under certain conditions.

Both still exist, they are just different ways of expressing Attention Discongruence. Compare it with introvert - extrovert. ADDers are very busy with their own thoughts, and therefore are daydreamers. ADHDers are busy with doing everything.

My hypothesis: life is becoming faster and faster, and therefore people who cannot concentrate their attention are more severely handicapped than they used to be. That together with the better ways to diagnose AD(H)D, and correlations that are found by brain scans.

Don’t forget that Ritalin, which is a neural stimulant, helps both groups (i.e. about 80% of them).

Brains adapt and develop according to the stimulus that is provided. If they get lots of stimulus then they get used to that level of stimulus.

I think that is the problem right there. My parents grew up without television. When I was a kid there were 5 channels and the TV was black & white. I think being black & white instantly communicated the fact that it WAS NOT REAL.

But now it is aggravating to look through all of the channels just to try to find if there is anything worth watching. I’ll just leave the TV off to not bother looking. LOL

But watching the news is often annoying. They put all of this moving and flashing computer generated junk on the screen. I just close my eyes an listen. But what does it do to young kids whose brains can still adapt to almost anything. So once they are adjusted to high speed crap from the boob tube how are they supposed to sit in a class room. Most of the time that was boring to me back in the 60s. Sci-fi books helped me get through school. I could sit quietly and look attentive while thinking about something completely different from what the teacher was talking about.

But I would have found Harry Potter boring.

We now have a very weird world.

psik

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I was looking over the literature for ADHD. The DSM has it defined so that it has to have started before age 7. With this narrow of a definition it almost has to be a genetic, biological, or development during pregnancy disorder. The literature says smoking during pregancy increases the risk of the child having ADHD. I think the phenomenon that citizenschallenge.pm and I were commenting on is real, but is not ADHD under the current definition. I don’t know what our phenomenon is called, but it is also has to do with “attention.”